AES E-Library

Music Information Retrieval in Broadcasting: Some Visual Applications

The academic research field of music information retrieval is expanding as rapidly as the MP3 collection of a stereotypical teenager. This could be no coincidence : the benefit of an automated genre classifier increases when the music collection contains several thousand tracks. Of course, there are other applications of music information retrieval. Here we highlight a few that make use of a simple, visual, representation of an audio signal, based on three easy-to-calculate audio features. The applications range from simple navigation around consumer recordings of broadcasts, to a music video production planning tool, to a short term "Listen Again" eye-catching display.